Part 34 (2/2)
The girl's form became rigid as she fought for self-control. The plea touched to the bottom of her heart, but she could not, would not yield.
Her words rushed forth with a bitterness that was the cover of her distress.
”I am what I am,” she said sharply. ”I can't change. Keep your promise, now, and let's get out of this.”
Her a.s.sertion was disregarded as to the inability to change.
”You can change,” d.i.c.k went on impetuously. ”Mary, haven't you ever wanted the things that other women have, shelter, and care, and the big things of life, the things worth while? They're all ready for you, now, Mary.... And what about me?” Reproach leaped in his tone. ”After all, you've married me. Now it's up to you to give me my chance to make good.
I've never amounted to much. I've never tried much. I shall, now, if you will have it so, Mary; if you'll help me. I will come out all right, I know that--so do you, Mary. Only, you must help me.”
”I help you!” The exclamation came from the girl in a note of incredulous astonishment.
”Yes,” d.i.c.k said, simply. ”I need you, and you need me. Come away with me.”
”No, no!” was the broken refusal. There was a great grief clutching at the soul of this woman who had brought vengeance to its full flower.
She was gasping. ”No, no! I married you, not because I loved you, but to repay your father the wrong he had done me. I wouldn't let myself even think of you, and then--I realized that I had spoiled your life.”
”No, not spoiled it, Mary! Blessed it! We must prove that yet.”
”Yes, spoiled it,” the wife went on pa.s.sionately. ”If I had understood, if I could have dreamed that I could ever care---- Oh, d.i.c.k, I would never have married you for anything in the world.”
”But now you do realize,” the young man said quietly. ”The thing is done. If we made a mistake, it is for us to bring happiness out of that error.”
”Oh, can't you see?” came the stricken lament. ”I'm a jail-bird!”
”But you love me--you do love me, I know!” The young man spoke with joyous certainty, for some inflection of her voice had told the truth to his heart. Nothing else mattered. ”But now, to come back to this hole we're in here. Don't you understand, at last, that you can't beat the law? If you're caught here to-night, where would you get off--caught here with a gang of burglars? Tell me, dear, why did you do it? Why didn't you protect yourself? Why didn't you go to Chicago as you planned?”
”What?” There was a new quality in Mary's voice. A sudden throb of shock masked in the surface indifference of intonation.
d.i.c.k repeated his question, un.o.bservant of its first effect.
”Why didn't you go to Chicago as you had planned?”
”Planned? With whom?” The interrogation came with an abrupt force that cried of new suspicions.
”Why, with Burke.” The young man tried to be patient over her density in this time of crisis.
”Who told you that I had arranged any such thing?” Mary asked. Now the tenseness in her manner got the husband's attention, and he replied with a sudden gravity, apprehensive of he knew not what.
”Burke himself did.”
”When?” Mary was standing rigid now, and the rare color flamed in her cheeks. Her eyes were blazing.
”Less than an hour ago.” He had caught the contagion of her mood and vague alarm swept him.
”Where?” came the next question, still with that vital insistence.
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